Marcus Aurelius

Emperor of Rome

Marcus Aurelius was one of Rome's greatest emperors; he completely embodied the title of philosopher king. To this day, even in the circles of the enemy, his name is exalted as a ruler among rulers. In every way, he avoided all the excesses and deprivations that so often dominated the Roman imperators. Many examples of his personal conduct parallel few other rulers in history in terms of wisdom, balance and assuredness.

EARLY LIFE

Marcus Aurelius, one of the most celebrated emperors of ancient Rome and a philosopher revered for his Stoic meditations, was born on April 26, 121 CE, in Rome. His birth name was Marcus Annius Verus, belonging to a wealthy and influential family that traced its roots to southern Spain. Marcus was born into an era known historically as the Pax Romana, a prolonged period of relative peace and prosperity in the Roman Empire. His early years were marked by privilege, education, and exposure to intellectual influences that shaped his character profoundly.

Marcus's paternal family, the Annii, had a distinguished lineage, boasting senatorial rank for generations. His father, Marcus Annius Verus the Elder, served as a prominent politician and held the office of praetor, while his mother, Domitia Lucilla Minor, came from a wealthy family known for its brick manufacturing businesses. Sadly, Marcus’s father died when he was only three years old, in 124 CE. This early loss had a lasting impact on his emotional and intellectual development, thrusting him into the close care of his grandfather, Marcus Annius Verus, a respected senator and a friend to Emperor Hadrian.

His grandfather played a significant role in his upbringing, emphasizing education, virtue, and duty. The family residence on the Caelian Hill in Rome was a center of intellectual discourse and political power, providing Marcus with exceptional educational opportunities. His tutors included some of Rome's greatest intellectual figures, who deeply influenced his outlook and character. Among these influential educators was Marcus Cornelius Fronto, a distinguished rhetorician known for his eloquent speaking and writing style. Fronto instilled in Marcus a lifelong appreciation for literature, rhetoric, and effective communication, skills that served him well in later political life.

PHILOSOPHER-EMPEROR

Marcus Aurelius is often known as a disciple of Stoic philosophy and an unusual ruler who wrote several philosophical tracts directly. Yet this summary of obscures what his largesse and wisdom could be owed to. Aurelius never merely followed Stoic ideas, as his inquiries about life were gained through observation of a variety of philosophical schools. The first introduction to philosophy came from the hands of a painting master, Diognetus. Following this, he is known to have adopted austere and hardening manners from a young age, wearing the philosopher’s toga and refusing to engage in luxury to the point of sleeping on the floor.

Many of the skills he learned were from Fronto, one of the greatest Latin orators, who trained Marcus Aurelius and his adoptive brother Lucius Verus in exercising style and moderation in his speech, alongside monitoring the adulthood of the two men closely. Their bond was extraordinarily enduring.

Although his health was never ideal and he battled almost constant pain, Marcus did engage in many other physical pursuits. One of these was fowling with an arrow and bow. It was the exercise of control that these sports offered and a parallel to the adroitness of forming beliefs (a person seeking knowledge must have the same skill as the archer in hitting a target) that cultivated the mentality of the eventual emperor of Rome.

Marcus was instructed foremost by his adopted father, the emperor Antoninus Pius, whom he credits as contributing most to his development by steering him onto the right path. From his adoptive mother and biological aunt, Faustina, Marcus learned much about benevolence and due charity, which he used during his reign.

For example, after the flooding of the Tiber early on, he opened the Roman granaries to the poor. It was this sense of gratitude to others that obliged Marcus to always confer with the wisest men before making a decision, to permit resolute free speech and to always ask the Senate when using funds from the treasury. He even asserted that:

It is juster that I should yield to the counsel of such a number of such friends than that such a number of such friends should yield to my wishes, who am but one.¹

In addition:

Hic cum omnibus Romae aequo iure egit, ad nullam insolentiam elatus est imperii fastigio; liberalitatis promptissimae.

He dealt with everyone in Rome with equal sense of justice, and was not raised to any arrogance by the height of his sovereignty; of the most ready generosity.²

Hadrian, the Emperor of Rome, noticed the young Marcus' talents and is speculated to have machinated to make the young Marcus his successor: from a young age he had noticed his plain manner of telling the truth and so Hadrian nicknamed him ‘Verissimus’ (the most truthful one).

When Pius died, Marcus deified his adopted father as soon as possible. Likewise, Marcus did not rule as a sole emperor, but in conjunction with his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus. No two simultaneous rulers of Rome until Diocletian would rule in such harmony, though Aurelius disapproved of Verus’ luxurious lifestyle, they maintained a close and amiable relationship. The two to this day are still represented standing side by side as solemn statues, an enduring symbol of good rulership.

The level of respect Marcus showed to all of his teachers was immense:

On his teachers in general, moreover, he conferred great honours, for he even kept golden statues of them in his chapel and made it a custom to show respect for their tombs by personal visits and by offerings of sacrifices and flowers.¹

By the time he became co-emperor alongside Lucius Verus in 161 CE, Marcus was exceptionally well-prepared intellectually, morally, and administratively. His early life, characterized by tragedy, education, mentorship, and philosophical inquiry, provided the depth of character and insight necessary to govern effectively and ethically.

HEIGHT OF THE EMPIRE

In his reign, Rome approached its highest apex as a kingdom of marble and stone. Aurelius represents the period when divine Greek learning blossomed throughout the Roman lands with himself as a warden of this learning since childhood, a steward of this form of cultural synthesis that tamed many of the ruthless aspects of Roman culture and seemed to be setting the Empire on a more divine path.

He was known for his piercing intelligence, sense of justice and benevolence. One example of this is the great value he put on all forms of life. While other emperors sentenced families to death for lifting a finger against them, for Aurelius, attempts against his life were not met with copious cruelty. In the case of Cassius, a rebel general who sought to overthrow him, Aurelius only ordered executions of those directly involved after scrutinizing and agonizing over every detail, while compensating the family of Cassius, who had been assassinated. While the plebeians and others in Rome demanded he show enjoyment at the bloody gladiatorial games, Aurelius demanded the weapons be replaced with ones unlikely to cause serious injury in his presence.

When praetors were known to be rushing cases of capital crimes, this appalled him. They were forced to re-do the trials under his supervision.

There was no ruler of Antiquity so beloved universally by their people or the Senate as Marcus Aurelius, no mean feat in an empire estimated to house sixty million people and which during his reign was decimated by a plague, foreign invasions, conspiracies and many other problems. Upon death, he was unanimously deified by the Senate. The only posthumous criticisms anyone could offer of him was that he did not use the treasury enough for entertainments.

FAMILY CULT

His devotion to his wife Faustina and children was well known. Faustina followed Aurelius on many of his military campaigns. Aurelius sired many children, many of which did not live to adulthood and is thought to have informed the passages about death in the Meditations. When his son Commodus fell ill with a fever, he called upon the preeminent doctor Galen to heal him. Upon Faustina’s death, he erected a golden statue of her to follow him, showing his esteem of her. He also opened institutions for orphaned girls under her name.

Yet his wisdom was not merely in adherence to these schools of philosophy, art, nor sports, nor his benevolence, but was a sum total of being a high level and hard-working individual under the tutelage of the Gods who took their cues in every matter very seriously. It was by cultivating the divinity in himself, detailed throughout the pages of the Meditations, that Aurelius learned to work with others and defied the odds to maintain Rome during his lifetime as a kingdom of gold.

Later in adult life, he threw himself into the Eleusinian Mysteries and numerous spiritual trials to ascend to an even higher spiritual level, for which he rewarded the city of Athens greatly by installing teachers of every area of life there:

When Marcus had come to Athens and had been initiated into the [Eleusinian] Mysteries, he not only bestowed honours upon the Athenians, but also, for the benefit of the whole world, he established teachers at Athens in every branch of knowledge, granting these teachers an annual salary.³

Marcus Aurelius’s commitment to Stoical attittudes deepened with age, profoundly influencing his governance and personal conduct. He was particularly drawn to the Stoic emphasis on duty, virtue, rationality, and self-control. These principles permeated every aspect of his personal and political life, preparing him uniquely for the challenges ahead.

However, contrary to modern belief, he was not only a Stoic, but mixed different philosophical disciplines of the era, only eschewing outright atheism.

WAR

In line with the Meditations themes of expansion and to hold true to one’s task in life, the challenging task of Marcus Aurelius was to defend and expand the Roman state while navigating several disasters. For this reason, he waged several wars against the Marcomanni and other tribes of the Germans who had been settling in Rome illegally. Marcus is thus known as one of the most prolific of Rome’s military leaders and his war was considered on a par with the Punic wars by the public, as he concluded it successfully in spite of several disasters.

Marcus was known to bring philosophers and evolved souls to the battlefield:

Indeed, there is a story to the effect that Arnuphis, an Egyptian magician, who was a companion of Marcus, had invoked by means of enchantments various deities and in particular Mercury, the god of the air, and by this means attracted the rain…¹

After this, he built a shrine to Hermes and also created the massive Column of Marcus Aurelius, which still stands as an impressive monument to Roman power and greatness.

COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS

The Column of Marcus Aurelius still stands in Piazza Colonna in Rome. Erected in his honor, commemorates Emperor Marcus Aurelius's military campaigns against the Germanic tribes of the Marcomanni and Quadi and the Sarmatians. Emperor Marcus Aurelius is portrayed as a conqueror and solemn figure of Roman rule.

The reliefs adorning the spiral shape of the column convey the war’s progression in an almost mythic manner. Dio and other historians attest to the so called ‘rain miracle’ which is also portrayed extensively in one scene.